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snusilda
Community Member

How budgets of previous jobs affect new jobs

Hi community! This thread is an invitation for an open discussion rather than a question or a problem to be solved. I’ve been wondering how the budgets of the previous projects from work history might affect the budgets/scopes for future projects.

 

I recently switched to design from being a virtual assistant and managed to land a couple of design projects with $100+ budgets fast because my profile was quite developed already from those previous jobs. I was applying to little design jobs that have budgets of $5-10 as well (so many of them popping on my jobs feed), because I knew I had to start somewhere, but I got lucky. Now I am thinking to avoid projects with small budgets whatsoever because I feel like if I want to go in the direction of bigger budgets/scopes, that should reflect in my work history.

 

What I mean is that if I get a potential client with a big project coming to my page, and they see that most of my recent jobs are 5-minute fixes for $5-10, that client might be less likely to hire me simply because of that kind of work history, even though they like my portfolio and all. Making it not worth it to take the small projects even for the sake of nice new feedbacks, although those are important for the beginner as well. But I feel I'd rather have fewer projects with bigger budgets/scopes in my work history than a thousand $5 ones.

 

What are your thoughts on this matter?

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kadame
Community Member

Hi Oleksandra,

I think once you have a high rating, that's going to draw clients to you - however, if they do glance at your previous jobs and see the low rates, I beleive it might give the impression that you're not able to actually get hired at the rate you quote on your profile.

If you can get $100 jobs, even if there are fewer of them, I'd focus on those. My reasoning is, it takes time to apply and interview, and you're not paid for that time, so I think it's smarter to focus on the higher paying jobs. If you do one per day, compare that to doing 20 jobs at $5 each in a day and dealing with the application and conversation for each one? That doesn't seem very profitable to me, although I know some people do it. Also, if you can get ongoing jobs, your Upwork fees go down and you make more money by continuing to work for the same client. If you've built up a strong reputation as a VA, it will still work in your favor for design work because reliability is a very important factor in hiring, and your design portfolio will speak for you 🙂

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kadame
Community Member

Hi Oleksandra,

I think once you have a high rating, that's going to draw clients to you - however, if they do glance at your previous jobs and see the low rates, I beleive it might give the impression that you're not able to actually get hired at the rate you quote on your profile.

If you can get $100 jobs, even if there are fewer of them, I'd focus on those. My reasoning is, it takes time to apply and interview, and you're not paid for that time, so I think it's smarter to focus on the higher paying jobs. If you do one per day, compare that to doing 20 jobs at $5 each in a day and dealing with the application and conversation for each one? That doesn't seem very profitable to me, although I know some people do it. Also, if you can get ongoing jobs, your Upwork fees go down and you make more money by continuing to work for the same client. If you've built up a strong reputation as a VA, it will still work in your favor for design work because reliability is a very important factor in hiring, and your design portfolio will speak for you 🙂

snusilda
Community Member

Hi Kerry Ann, 

 

I agree that it is usually not worth it to even spend time/connects on getting such low-budget jobs once you have a profile that allows you to get better jobs. I was more curious about how it looks from the perspective of the potential clients who see the work history. 

 

Thanks for replying and supporting my idea that the budgets of the previous jobs can make a difference 🙂 That definitely makes sense - if you have a rate of $30/hour, let's say, but most of your recent projects are not even reaching those $30 in the budget, that's a clear sign for the clients that you're not able to land the jobs for the stated rate.

All of the above is completely valid stuff, but it only applies to the case where you are in direct competition with a lot of others. Then, starting on the low side may be the only way to get anything going.

However, the trick to going fast and completely without spending time on $10 projects is to start with a very narrow niche that has minimal if any competition. Then, even a $0 earnings guy might seem like a specialist to just a couple of clients if all the other parts of the profile are perfect, your proposal is dynamite, and you ace the interview. You can easily get at least the industry average rates even on your first gig.

Better even, once you get past the starting phase, you can slowly switch that original niche to something else as long as you stay inside the domain category.

At some point you get so many invitations for all your current and past niches that you can focus on improving your client filtering process when there's nothing else left to do. The platform will do all the heavy lifting for you. 😉 That's the sweet spot.
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